


Nothing to Say

by Aryashi



Series: Rvb Fic Wars [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Badly dealing with grief, Gen, Post Season 13, RvB Angst War, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 16:17:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6617533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryashi/pseuds/Aryashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a way, Caboose not being dramatic about what happened was worse than anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing to Say

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: how about Tucker and Caboose, and the line “just leave me alone” ?

“Caboose?”

Caboose didn’t look up from the pieces and parts of a small radio. Tucker was no expert, but he had a sneaking suspicion that it was the same radio he’d seen Caboose working on yesterday. And the day before that. Possibly even the day before that last one.

“Haven’t seen you in the mess hall for a while…” Understatement. Caboose hadn’t left his quarters since he’d been cleared to leave Medical.

“I am not hungry,” Caboose said, the exact opposite of conversationally.

The dialogue stalled and died a pathetic death. Tucker kicked its corpse.

“What’cha working on?”

“A radio.”

“… was it like, broken or…?”

Caboose put down one section of circuit board and picked up the larger casing. He started unscrewing another part from the back when he said “The sound was buzzy. I’m fixing it.”

Freckles, leaned up against the wall nearby, chose that moment to interrupt. “Captain Caboose has taken apart and put together the radio 57 times.”

“Snitches get stitches, Freckles!” Caboose shouted, “And bad stitches totally mess up your nice art project! Just pattern breaking lines everywhere and all your hard work is ruined forever.”

Tucker stared. Tried to look inside the armor and see if Caboose had the same dark circles under his eyes Wash did, or maybe the red cracks in white that Tucker got now. Caboose held the tools steady, shoulders relaxed, no obvious signs of someone keeping in a major freak out.

“Stop looking so hard Tucker, it is very distracting.”

Tucker decided dancing around the issue wasn’t going to get anyone anywhere. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

Tucker had no idea how to react to that.

“… do you wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

Tucker thought he’d seen Caboose in mourning before. The long bouts of sadness in the canyon had sure seemed like mourning to him. Dramatic, childish, expressing every thought that entered Caboose’s head, running towards the first real distraction he came up with full tilt. Tucker realized then that maybe Caboose being sad over someone going away and Caboose being sad that his best friend was for certain-no-take-backs Dead were very different things.

“Look, Caboose, this isn’t-“

“Please just leave me alone.” Tucker flinched. Caboose sounded cold and distant and not once in the entire conversation had he looked up from the radio.

Caboose sounded like Washington.

“Buddy-”

Pointed metal in front of his eye through his helmet quivering the HUD was cracked _sharp steel shaking a centimeter away from his fucking cornea-_

 ** _“DON’T CALL ME THAT!”_** Caboose was on his feet, scattered radio parts everywhere, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Tucker reached up and yanked on the screwdriver embedded in his helmet visor. _Caboose had thrown the screwdriver directly at his eye. What the **fuck.**_

“ ** _GO! GO AWAY TUCKER! I HATE YOU! YOU CAN’T HELP ME, YOU CAN’T HELP ANYONE, IT’S ALL! YOUR! FAULT!”_**

Tucker’s heart leapt into his throat then plummeted down into the depths of his stomach.

He left. There wasn’t anything else to say.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a sneaking suspicion my conception of Caboose post season 13 is very different from most people’s.


End file.
